Thursday, 22 April 2010

Twitter Oscars

By Richard Jay Parker

If you were one of the people who voted for my Twitter commentary in this week's AUTHOR BLOG AWARDS then thanks for the prolapse I got on Tuesday night when I was informed that I was runner up. The insuperable Neil Gaiman was, of course, the winner. With a plump back catalogue of buxomly funny books and a justifiably vast Twitter following worldwide there really was no other candidate.

But to have walked on that virtual red carpet, to have felt the virtual bubbles of champagne in my nostrils was quite a bizarre experience so thanks again for anyone who went to COMPLETELY NOVEL and registered a vote for my sporadic and often bewildered Tweets about trying to write.

When people ask me about the amount of time I spend on Twitter and if it's a viable way to get the world and it's aunt interested in your work I can now say resoundingly 'I don't know.' It's fun though and I've met a lot of decent people through it - some in the industry and a lot who have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Has it driven more people to buy STOP ME? Again, I just don't know. Twitter isn't something that can be easily measured. It's as capable of laying eggs for you as it is of pecking a hole in your brain. In the nicest possible way, of course.

4 comments:

I often question the value of Twitter as a personal advertising tool, but then it's true that without it *I* wouldn't have read STOP ME, so there's something. Congratulations on the nomination, and the runner-up!

I would agree with Jen's comments above. If I hadn't heard of Stop Me via Twitter I would never have read it. Partly cause it's not carried over here really. I think the book was great and I forwarded it to friends and did a think at my college on it. I introduced alot of new people to your book and all because of twitter. So I think twitter can definitely help and it’s entertaining!

I think Twitter does help a bit. I've connected with fellow bloggers, It provides a good way to stay in touch with authors, and also publishers (for reviewing purposes, I've snagged a few books purely through twitter).

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